Beyond experience, against the empirical

The opening definition is careful. Metaphysics explores the essence of things and the fundamental principles of existence by thought or by intuition. It is super-empirical. It is set against empirical natural science, sometimes named as the study of what is below form. The inquiry, in this telling, does not start from observation in the ordinary scientific sense.

The word itself is a joining of Meta and Physika. That etymology is given as a pointer, not as a later history of the term. What matters for the account is the contrast: a study that reaches for first principles, and a science that stays with what can be experienced.

First philosophy, a name attached later, and the Way

Aristotle, the account says, called the study of the fundamental principles of being “first philosophy.” The word “metaphysics” did not exist in his time. What was meant was “the study after physics.” After his death, disciples bound writings that had no title, and the name was attached to them. The origin of the word is therefore later than the inquiry it came to name.

The account adds that views later associated with Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger changed in chronological order. The account does not spell out those doctrines, and they are not filled in. In the East, the same kind of inquiry has been called that which is above form, or the Way. That naming is left as it is given, without a later comparative history.

Sources

1. an account of metaphysics as a super-empirical inquiry into essence and first principles, of Aristotle’s first philosophy and the later attaching of the name, and of Eastern naming as that which is above form, or the Way, without a detailed filling-in of later doctrines.

Last updated: 14 November 2026